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Monday, August 25, 2008

Off the Beaten Path

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Hotel Jama PostonjaAfter the motorcycle accident on the way to Postonja in Slovenia I couldn't get it out of my mind that I had failed so miserably. I mean I had been given the go ahead to take a longer trip and I didn't even make it half way to my destination before dumping my motorcycle at the side of the autobahn. My wife had been very understanding but she could see I wasn't right in the head since the event. There was no way I would be allowed to go off by myself on one last motorcycle adventure before I left but a compromise was reached and we decided to travel together... in a car.


We rented a car in Split and brought it back to Jadrtovac to pack up and go. We hadn't decided on a destination but we really only had to directions to choose from... left or right. Regular readers of my blog would know what my choice would be but because I had a co-pilot along the decision wasn't as easy. We finally decided to choose democratically and flip a coin.

So after turning left we still had to come up with a destination but I figured that could wait until later. Let's start by getting some kilometers under my tires. At least get further than last time.

Along the way I started to put a map together in my mind. The car had a gps but gps is for losers and I wasn't going to use it. I figured with the amount of time we had our choices would be Venice, Postonja, or perhaps Lake Balaton in Hungary. We got to our next choice... left or right? Left again, so we were heading for Rjeka. I guess we'll go to Venice.

When we arrived in Rjeka my co-pilot decided to turn on the GPS and set a destination. The damn thing had us lost in about five minutes.

"Drive point two kilometers then do U-turn", it droned at me in that pompous female voice.

"Drive point one kilometers then do U-turn"

"U-turn"

Yeah right. So I decided to take control of my destiny again. This incident just reaffirmed my decision not to use a gps on my motorcycle trip. I couldn't imagine having to listen to that bitch talk over my tunes inside my motorcycle helmet. I would have smashed it three thousand kilometers ago.

Needless to say, I was lost. I zigzagged my way through residential districts of what must still be Rjeka until I saw a sign that resembled the type of sign you would see on a more traveled thoroughfare. When I saw a sign that said 'SL' in a circle I knew we were heading for Slovenia. OK plan change. Let's go to the caves in Postonja.

We kept to smaller rural roads all the way to Postonja. We took another try at the GPS when we figured we were close enough. We got to the center of town and then we just followed the signs to the caves. We grabbed a hotel room, dropped off our luggage, had a drink from the minibar and then headed into town. There was a festival going on so we decided to get some money from the ATM and go check it out.

"Unable to process transaction", lit up across the ATM screen

OK... try again.

"Unable to process transaction"

Shoot! Try a different machine.

"Unable to process transaction"

This bodes poorly for us. We have absolutely no cash.

We spent the next hour following the GPS around to every bank machine in Postonja and none of them worked with our cards. Being from Canada it's not common practice to withdraw money from credit cards so I don't know my PIN number for any of them.

We're screwed. I guess we'll have to do things that take credit cards only.

We stopped in for a meal and we were so disapointed by the food. Actually, it was terrible. I hope this isn't typical for Slovenia. Needless to say the stress of having no access to cash was making me a terrible dining parter anyways.

We went back to the hotel and dummied the minibar. Can you say, "Charge It!"?

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